


sinking like a stone

by Antares8



Series: The Pilgrim's Progress [19]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Beast Wirt, Gen, Kidnapping, Magical Artifacts of Terrifyingly Unknown Purpose, Winter, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29302542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antares8/pseuds/Antares8
Summary: Wirt's been worried about Beatrice's family for months, and now, it's happened. Someone's stolen an O'Sialia child to use against the Beast's heir.
Relationships: Beatrice & Wirt (Over the Garden Wall), Wirt & Beatrice's Family
Series: The Pilgrim's Progress [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1051850
Comments: 42
Kudos: 143





	sinking like a stone

sinking like a stone

There's a bad feeling clenching in the pit of Wirt's stomach. He finds himself looking over his shoulder, reaching out with his forest-sense as far as it can go.

It's been two days since his weekly check on the O'Sialias. Running to their home, making certain that they're all right, and returning more slowly to Kenningdole takes about twelve hours altogether. Should he go back? Screw it, he'll go back. It's not like he has a deadline for his campaign of aggressive neighborliness.

Wirt shifts to deer-shape as soon as he's out of the town's line of sight. He wants to sprint full speed ahead, but he manages to restrain himself. Pacing is essential.

He still makes record time, arriving at the O'Sialia millhouse on aching legs.

The older youngest children meet him at the door with kitchen knives in their fists. Their parents and oldest siblings are gone; Wirt can sense four of them at the edge of his awareness, two groups of two. The youngest children are huddling in the back of the house.

Wallace hugs him tight, burying his face in the Pilgrim's shirt. His shoulders are shaking. The other kids follow suit a moment later.

"Oh, no," Wirt breathes. "What happened?"

But he knows. Oh, God, he knows.

It's Andrew, the kids tell him. Andrew, who felt most stifled by the boundaries imposed by the protection spell; Andrew, who had been known to sneak beyond them.

Their parents and four oldest siblings are scouring the woods, shouting themselves hoarse and interrogating the few birds present this early in the spring. The birds are searching too, flitting back and forth among the trees, but they haven't heard anything yet.

"I can't sense him either," Wirt admits, straining his forest-sense. "He's still got his protective charm on, right?"

He had when they saw him last—they wear their amulets all the time—but the spells aren't proof against everything. They are like armor on a knight, covering vulnerabilities but not foolproof, not if one knows where the weak spots are. The kids know this.

"Okay," Wirt says, "okay. I can find him." Then, with more (fake) confidence, "I can find him. I will find him. You saw him last over there, right?" That's right. "Your parents are off that way, too. I'll send them back when I pass by."

How, Wirt wonders, loping towards the first pair of O'Sialias, is he supposed to find Andrew? The trees are just barely waking up; they will not have any information. The snow is half-melted, though. There should be footprints, if he can just find the correct set. Except there's a road that leads between the millhouse and an intersection, and if Andrew ended up there, then he'll be virtually impossible to track.

Peggy and Carol startle when he comes upon them, but then hope dawns in their eyes. "You can find him, right?" pleas Carol. "There's all sorts of stories about the Beast hunting people down." Her smile wavers. "I never thought I'd be grateful he could do that."

"I'll find him," Wirt promises.

Peggy's eyes narrow. She must have caught something in his tone. "You do know how to use it, don't you? The magic the Beast used to find people."

Darn it. "Not exactly," Wirt's forced to admit.

Their faces crumple.

"But there's plenty that I can do," Wirt babbles. "I don't even know if the Beast even actually had a special person-finding sense. He might have just used his nose, the trees, and his forest-sense, and I know how to use all of those." He's never tried to sniff someone out like a hunting dog, but he's almost certainly capable of it. "I'll find him. I swear to you, I will find him."

The words settle on his shoulders with a peculiar weight. Perhaps he's accidentally invoked some kind of unbreakable magic oath, or perhaps it's something more mundane. It doesn't matter, because either way, the Pilgrim is keeping his word.

"Can you sense him now?" Peggy asks.

"No, not yet." Wirt squeezes his eyes shut, focuses as hard as he can, but he can't find Andrew. "Have the birds seen anything?"

Nothing useful.

"Of course not." Beatrice is always grumbling about how birds are terrible sources of information. "I told the kids at the house that I'd ask you to go back."

They look towards the west, where the sun skims the horizon. Carol's shoulders slump.

"We should at least get some food and lanterns," her mother says.

"Right. Good luck, Wirt."

"Thank you."

Patrick and Martha haven't had any luck either. They're a bit more reluctant to regroup at the millhouse, but then Martha's stomach gurgles loudly. After that, it's just Beatrice and Junior, who are weaving in and out of the protection spell in an entirely different area.

"Wirt!" Beatrice exclaims as he bursts from the trees. "How did you know?"

"…Come to think of it, I'm not actually sure. I just had a really bad feeling."

"Any feelings about where to look?"

"No," he laments. "Did you two get anything from the birds?"

Junior is stricken. Beatrice looks ready to launch into a tirade about the uselessness of stupid feathery idiots but restrains herself at the last moment. "I think they might have taken him onto the road," she says instead.

"I'll try to sniff him out," Wirt answers. More softly, he adds, "Go home. You two need to eat and sleep and get out of the cold. I don't." He gestures at his bare feet.

Beatrice's mouth is a thin line. She knows that Wirt is right, but she doesn't like it. Her head jerks in a nod. "Find him, Wirt."

"I will."

Wirt searches. He shifts to deer form and presses his nose to the road, searching for Andrew's scent. Nothing. Either he hadn't been there or the smell hadn't lingered.

As he trots along, Wirt tries to put himself in the kidnappers' shoes. Which road would they have taken? They'd probably have gone north, at least to start with, though they'd have to turn aside before reaching Pottsfield. He knows that there's at least one intersection between the millhouse and the skeleton town—it splits off towards Kenningdole in the east and other places to the west—but are there any other forks in the northern road? There's two crossroads to the east before the path reaches Kenningdole, and he doesn't know what happens to the west.

He mulls it over. If the kidnappers are trying to use Andrew against him—not that there's any other reason for someone to take the poor kid—then maybe they'd gone towards Kenningdole, where he'd been for almost three months now, to get closer to their ultimate target. Would Wirt have noticed if he'd passed them? Probably not, since he habitually walks through the woods and wasn't paying any attention to the roads.

They probably wouldn't bring Andrew to Kenningdole itself. There's too much of a possibility that something would go wrong in a town. Yet it seems foolish to take on the Beast's heir in a forest, and it's just barely spring. Perhaps this person—or persons. He doesn't know how many there are—is in a little hamlet or just an isolated cottage.

Wirt goes east. He alternates between a trot and a walk, occasionally sniffing the ground for a trace of Andrew's scent, and takes every left turn for a mile or two before heading back to the main road. He has just returned from one of these detours when something pings on the very edges of his forest-sense, something horrifically familiar.

It feels like someone is holding open a door for him.

A witch is trying to summon the Beast.

* * *

Wirt lurks at the edge of the forest, staring at a small cluster of houses with brown, non-glowing human eyes. He can sense Andrew's familiar presence inside one of them, but it's oddly dulled, like someone's drawn a veil over a lantern. Four more people are in the same cabin, and the other houses are populated with children and adults. It appears that one person in this little hamlet went rogue, found some friends, and kidnapped a child to lure the new Beast into a trap.

A dark voice in the back of Wirt's mind murmurs that it would be so easy to kill the witches. He can tear through their spells of protection like tissue paper, he can turn their very souls to wood and oil with little more than a thought. It is not the Beast's voice, not the part of his predecessor that has been with Wirt since he blew out the Dark Lantern. It's the deep-seated anger of a boy who had given up his home and family and humanity, who has been shot and stabbed and set upon by dogs, who's spent the last two months making only incremental progress in Kenningdole, and who now is looking at people that hunted down and kidnapped a child under his protection.

The Pilgrim stands there in the shadows and breathes, struggling to keep his wrath under control. (It's not working. The first light of dawn should be streaking the eastern horizon, but the skies remain dark. The moon and stars are dimmer than they should be, and the village's fires have dwindled to flickers and embers. The Light-Eater does not notice.)

He will not kill them, not unless the only way to avert imminent danger is through someone's death. If that happens—he'll make it quick. But only when it's a matter of _who_ will perish, not _whether_ someone will die.

Wirt Palmer is the Pilgrim, not the Beast. He will not murder.

(Even if they might just try again, should he let them go free… but there's other ways he can bring them to justice. This little hamlet doesn't have a jail, but Kenningdole does. Andrew has kin there. They'll prosecute these scumbags if Wirt brings them in.)

He needs a plan, a way to get Andrew away from these people or, better yet, a way to get them past the treeline, away from potential collateral damage. That's not going to happen, though. They aren't stupid enough to go beyond their wards. And while they might not realize he's here yet, they must expect that he's on his way.

Wirt slinks closer, darting from tree to tree until he's behind the neighboring home. He pauses, but no one has noticed him.

If he peeks around the corner, he can see that the other house's windows are shuttered. He darts forward, presses himself against the wall next to a shuttered window. He kneels. A small hole appears in the cottage's wooden walls, just barely enough for him to peer through. He looks inside, taking in details that his forest-sense hadn't told him.

Two men and a woman linger by the door. A second woman sits next to Andrew. The boy is sitting, but something about his posture seems off. He never sits with straight-backed stiffness, but now he's like a rag doll hanging from puppet strings, sitting limply and without motion.

Adelaide had stuffed peoples' heads with wool. What methods do these people have to ensure compliance? Nothing that would overtly harm Andrew—he still wears his amulet—but something to keep him still.

Anger flashes through his belly, but he draws in a deep breath to calm himself. Andrew is okay. That's what really matters.

But there's good news too: the witches' weapons all have wooden components. Wirt thinks that they must be planning to depend primarily on magic, their warded iron chains, and whatever's in the incredibly ominous metal chest that keeps blocking his forest-sense.

He considers for a few moments. Smiles, the expression sharp and dangerous. Splays his long-fingered, shadow-dappled hand against the cottage's wall.

Concentrates.

The Pilgrim tears through the witches' protections like storm winds through cobwebs. A half-second later, before the kidnappers have the opportunity to comprehend what's happened, much less respond to it, blackness floods into the building. Then the entire cottage crumbles into wood chips and sawdust.

Wirt lunges through the collapsing walls, going straight for Andrew. He scoops the boy up in his arms and runs, sore legs forgotten.

The boy doesn't respond. He's limp, listless. His eyes are open, Wirt observes once they're in a glade, but nobody's home.

Rage clenches his stomach, tightens his jaw (dims the sun itself), but maybe he can snap the kid out of it. "Andrew," Wirt says, giving him a little shake. "Andrew, wake up." No response, just blank staring. "W͔̹̥̱a̳̯̙͕ͅke̥͕ u͖̼͕͍͖͕p̹."

Still nothing.

There's a fog of magic around him. Wirt can see it if he squints and tilts his head.

…He has no idea what will happen if he just brute forces his way through that. He doesn't want to give Andrew brain damage. Honestly, he'd sort of been hoping that it would wear off on its own once they were away from the witches. Maybe it will once they're literally miles away, but Wirt can't take the risk that it won't.

He has to go back to the witches.

* * *

Shockingly, Wirt basically demolishing an entire house (and covering the chains and _especially_ the ominous box with nettles and thorns, because he is not an idiot) has not gone unnoticed. There's a crowd gathered outside the witches' residence, adults and children alike.

Maybe there's still a chance that he can keep them from becoming an angry mob. Wirt shifts to his more human guise and steps out of the forest. Nobody notices except a pair of siblings about Greg's age, who look at him with confusion but no alarm despite the fact that he's carrying a limp child in his arms and the adults are all raving about the Beast.

"Excuse me," Wirt calls, his voice overpowering the other speakers. They turn. The witch with the ratty hair blanches as she realizes who he is. Her friends take a moment longer, but then they're backing up in wide-eyed terror, automatically making the useless ward-evil sign. "You four enchanted my friend here, and you need to fix him."

"That's the Beast," chokes the big-nosed witch. His hands are shaking. "Stars preserve us, _that's the Beast_."

The crowd begins to draw away, parents pushing their children behind themselves. They take in his lack of antlers, his human eyes, with visible uncertainty. By now, most of the Unknown has heard that the Pilgrim can take on an almost-human form, but none of these folk have actually seen the Pilgrim's face. This stranger _might_ be the Beast's heir, but maybe he's not.

"I'm not the Beast," Wirt says. "I just want you to take the enchantment off my friend here, seeing as you're the ones who put it on him."

"Is that true?" demands a tall, imposing woman who might be the local mayor.

"He's the _Beast_ ," Big Nose wails.

The witch with the feather necklace starts chanting in a tongue that definitely isn't English. Wirt understands it anyways, knows on a deep instinctive level what she's trying to do. Those instincts guide him. He stretches out his hand, concentrates, flicks his wrist. The spell unravels.

Feathers gapes.

"I'm not here to hurt anyone," Wirt reiterates. "I just want one of you to fix Andrew here so I can bring him back to his parents."

The bystanders back away a few more steps, adults shielding children. The mayor watches them, fixes her shrewd gaze on Wirt before looking back at the witches. In a low, steady voice, she asks, "Did you lot deliberately _lure the Beast's heir_ to Maximspot?"

The crowd murmurs, but for once, their burgeoning anger isn't entirely focused on Wirt.

"We had a trap for him," Feathers protests.

"And it failed," Wirt points out. "Now get rid of whatever spell you put on Andrew and never come near him or his family ever again."

"Do it," the mayor orders.

"But—"

" _Do you want him angry with you_?"

"The boy's the only leverage we have!" exclaims Big Nose. "As soon as we give him what he wants—" He points dramatically at the ruined house.

The mayor is beginning to look uncertain. Wirt suppresses the urge to groan. He'd been _so close…._

"I'm not going to hurt anyone," Wirt repeats. "Seriously, I am not going to hurt anyone, and I would appreciate it if you four returned the favor by disenchanting Andrew." Frustration leaks into his voice as he adds, "I don't think that's too much to ask!"

As the humans flinch away from the angry not-Beast, Wirt reminds himself that he needs to be calm, patient, understanding. He needs to keep their perspectives in mind. They probably think that he's one funny look away from turning them all to edelwood.

He is so, so tired of being calm and patient and understanding. He'd managed to quell most of his earlier anger before returning to the village, burying it beneath the need for practicality, but now it's straining against its chains. These people kidnapped a child and did something to his mind, and _he's_ the bad guy for raising his voice when they flat-out refuse his completely reasonable request to make things right?

Shadows are creeping up Wirt's legs. The sunlight around him goes wan and pale. Behind him, the forest rustles, even though there's no wind.

The villagers keep looking from Wirt to the evidence of his anger to the house he'd destroyed with a thought. At least one of the children is making a high-pitched whimpering noise. Wirt is almost beyond caring.

"Why would you even do this?" Wirt demands. "I haven't done anything to any of you, I don't think I've ever seen you people in my entire life! Were you trying to hurt the mean scary Beast, or did you just want me under your control? Did you think you'd be hailed as _heroes_ for harming the one family in the entire fricking Unknown that treats me with basic human decency?" He should stop, he knows he should stop—a Beast's anger is terrifying to behold—but the dam has broken. The words burst from him like floodwaters.

"'Let's go and hunt down the Pilgrim,'" Wirt rants, pitching his voice so that it's high and mocking. (The shadows creep higher up his legs. His eyes are glowing blue yellow pink, though his antlers have yet to appear.) "'Never mind that he's never done anything to any of us or anybody we've ever met. Never mind that we didn't try going after the actual Beast, you know, the murderer who liked turning people into trees and devouring their life force and who would occasionally destroy entire towns because someone offended him! Let's go hurt the new guy who's spent over a year trying to clean up the Beast's mess, and let's go after his friends, too, because who cares about collateral damage when we're going after a monster?'"

He stops impersonating them, returning to his normal voice. Antlers spiral from his temples, and writhing shadows swath him from toe to tine. " _I do_! I care about the collateral, and so do Andrew's family and friends and, and a bunch of random birds. Fi̤̯x̝͔̹̩̼ͅ ̰̹̻͓̖h̩͕̖i͖͖m̘͉!̰̣̥͇̪͇̞"

The fourth witch, who until this point has done nothing to attract Wirt's attention, emits a little squeak of pure terror and releases the spell. Andrew jerks to awareness, his expression changing from placidity to bafflement to frozen horror.

All at once, Wirt realizes that he's covered in darkness, surrounded by thrashing shadows, with jagged antlers and burning demon eyes. He's human again in rapid time. Light floods the village as the Pilgrim helps the boy to the ground.

"What happened?" Andrew asks, taking in his surroundings. "Where am I?"

"Some witches kidnapped you," Wirt explains, shame curdling in his gut. Without fear or rage to fuel him, he feels empty, adrift, small and pathetic and worthless. He's all too aware of his tantrum, of the villagers who have fled to the meager protection of their houses. "Are you okay?"

The boy considers. "I think so," he mumbles. "How're Mom and Dad and everyone? Are they here too?" He looks around as though expecting his siblings to walk out of the forest.

"They had to go back home when night fell, but they had me keep searching."

Andrew bites his lip. In the grand scheme of things, he's actually not that many years younger than Wirt, but he seems very young then, and the Pilgrim feels ancient and tired. "I want to go home now."

Wirt hopes his smile looks genuine. "They'll be glad to see you. Do you want breakfast before we leave?"

The mayor chokes on a tangled string of consonants. "Young man," she wheezes, "you can't seriously want the _Beast_ to guide you home _through the forest_."

"The Beast's dead," Andrew retorts, after only a moment's hesitation. "Wirt won't hurt me. My sister would kill him." He nods firmly, like he hadn't just seen a terrifying creature of darkness looming at his side.

The curling misery inside Wirt lessens. Not much, but he notices.

The mayor's eyes flit between the Pilgrim and the child. "We'll send out a party to return you," she says. "We can get you home safely."

The misery somehow grows and tightens simultaneously.

Andrew is clearly starting to feel more like himself again. He starts arguing with the mayor, protesting that Wirt's not going to kill him, but she's not having it.

"It's fine," Wirt sighs. "They can get you home, too. Besides, I need to—"

_Pain._

* * *

It's been over a year since Wirt slept, and longer still since he's actually needed to sleep. Ergo, when he wakes up, it takes him a few moments to realize that he'd been unconscious.

Then memory returns. His head snaps up, anger and fear lending brightness to his eyes.

He's been hogtied, hands chained (and they are chains, metal and cold and heavy) against his feet behind his back. He's also been surrounded by nastily shining symbols written in black oil (that might have come from Wirt's hand, because his palm stings. There's an ache in his left antler, too, but he doesn't know if those bleed), things that the Beast-part of him recognizes with a hiss. They interfere with his powers, keep him from affecting anything beyond the barrier.

Well, fine. He can use the—wait. Are they on a _lake_? A moment's inspection reveals that he is, in fact, stranded in the middle of a frozen lake. That strikes Wirt as distinctly dangerous—the snow has been melting, and the ice must surely be rotten by now. Then again, his captors probably know spells to keep themselves safe, and it's not like they'd care if Wirt drowned. ( _Don't worry_ , he assures himself. _You probably can't drown anymore_.) But the point is, he's on a lake. No plant life here except some dead duckweed beneath the ice. It's clever and very annoying.

Two voices murmur in unison, one male and one female. They're reinforcing the wards, keeping them steady and strong. There were four witches, though. Where are the other two? Hopefully Wirt had scared them away before the one had hit him with… something. He's honestly not quite sure.

By now, Wirt's managed to squirm onto his side rather than his belly. He can grow his own plants. It'll be more difficult with those blasted sigils nearby, but he can—

"Don't try anything."

The witch with the feather necklace steps into his line of sight.

She's holding the Dark Lantern.

 _No_.

He can _feel_ it now, feel her mittened hands all over his soul, feel the way she grips the hatch that protects the vulnerable flame within. It's an awful sensation, sticky and cloying and intrusive. Terrifying, too, because she knows how to kill him.

Wirt swallows hard. "You know what will happen to you if you blow that out."

She glares. "At least I wouldn't go around turning people into edelwood like you did to my brother."

It's like she landed a punch to his gut. The blow almost makes him forget that she can wipe out his soul in mere heartbeats. "Your brother?" he echoes.

Somehow, it had never occurred to him that _that_ witch might have had people who loved him.

But Wirt collects himself quickly, spurred on by the sight of the Dark Lantern in her hand and the sound of her companions' chanting. "I'm sorry for what I did, but it was the only way I could think of to save the two little girls he was trying to sacrifice to me."

She sneers. "Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what happened. _Beast_."

Wirt wants to scream at her, to say that the real murderer doesn't deserve avenging. That he'd tried to offer human sacrifice to the most feared creature in the Unknown, that he'd planned to do horrible things to the one left behind. Wirt wants to tell her how hard he's been trying, how the death was an accident, how it haunts him still. But. There's something stony in Feathers's face, something that won't listen to any of his protests or explanations.

(It's not like the details haven't been circulating through the rumor mill for months. She must have heard what her brother was up to. Perhaps she'd even talked with those girls, with their families. But she clearly doesn't want to believe that her kinsman was that sort of sorcerer, and she's not going to listen _now_.)

So instead of talking, Wirt closes his eyes and tries to think of a way out of this before they complete… whatever they're planning. He no longer believes that the fourth witch ran off. Big Nose is doing something. But it's hard to concentrate when there's hands on his soul, gripping a part of him that—

A part of him that's outside the blood wards.

For a small fraction of a second, Wirt's lips twitch into a smile.

It takes him a minute or two to figure out how to channel his magic through the Lantern like he needs to. Once he's done that, though, he realizes that this plan isn't quite as useful as he'd hoped. They're still in the middle of a frozen lake. Feathers still has his soul in her hands, and she's ready to kill him at a moment's notice.

(What would happen if she drops the Lantern, if it falls through the ice?)

Dead duckweed won't do him much good. He could maybe grow the seeds in her belly (she must have had an apple with breakfast, and there's a few grains, too) but he's never actually done that before and doesn't want to accidentally kill her. Additionally, whatever he does has to be fast so she doesn't open up the Lantern, and he doesn't know how quickly he can make those seeds grow.

Perhaps he should go for one of the others, give them a hellish stomachache as a distraction, except then he'd run the risk of killing them. With a ruthlessness that frightens him, Wirt wonders if Feathers cares enough about her companions to bargain their lives for the Dark Lantern. Would she still snuff him out if he held another witch's life in his own hands? He thinks that she would.

After all, you couldn't trust a monster. A monster wouldn't keep his word. A monster would make a deal, take back his soul, and slaughter them all.

Wirt swallows down bile and considers his other option. He was very quick in... turning her brother to edelwood. (He shudders.) How long would it take to change Feathers? But when Wirt reaches out, seeking corruption, he can't find a place for his defensive magic to take root. Apparently she's not corrupt enough for his magic to take root. A relief, but also incredibly unhelpful.

He's been so distracted by his racing thoughts that he doesn't notice the fourth witch's return until the chanters' voices fall silent. A cold sweat breaks out on his brow.

The witch is holding a… a collar, all twigs and iron and antlerbone.

"Stay still." Feathers holds the Dark Lantern open, just a hand's width from her mouth. "Stay still or die, Beast."

The Pilgrim reaches out with his mind, frantically chipping away at whatever awful spell is on the collar. He can't break it, but he can create chinks, the possibility of ending the enchantment from within.

Big Nose yanks him up by the antler, bares his throat. Wirt meets his gaze, pleading silently, but the witch doesn't hesitate.

He slides the collar onto Wirt's neck.

**Author's Note:**

> DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN!
> 
> Title for the story comes from "The Fight is Over," which played in episode 9.
> 
> I intend to have the next bit up fairly soon, so refrain from murdering me until after then.
> 
> Stay safe, lovely friends!


End file.
